Mrs. McGinty died from a brutal blow to the back of her head. Suspicion falls immediately on her shifty lodger, James Bentley, whose clothes reveal traces of the victim’s blood and hair. Yet something is amiss: Bentley just doesn’t seem like a murderer.

Could the answer lie in an article clipped from a newspaper two days before the death? With a desperate killer still free, Hercule Poirot will have to stay alive long enough to find out …

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Quotes & Awards

“The best Poirot since such prewar classics as Cards on the Table."

New York Times

“The plot is perfect, and the characters are wonderful.”

San Francisco Chronicle

“[In] this village murder.. Poirot suffers in a vividly awful country guesthouse in order to get in with the community and rescue a rather unsatisfactory young man from the gallows. Highly ingenious.”

Robert Barnard, English crime writer and critic

“Who could be better reading this recording of Christie’s 1952 classic than Hugh Fraser, who…plays Captain Hastings in those lovely TV adaptations starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot? Fraser uses his own British accent to narrate, then switches impressively to a perfect Belgian tinge as he lets the master detective ramble on about French food, suspicious deaths, and how hard it is to handle both in the cities and villages of his adopted England…As the story begins to explode into a complex web of lies and hidden identities, novelist Ariadne Oliver (much more like the real Christie than the cute Miss Marple) joins the hunt to find the real murderer. Even fans familiar with the novel will enjoy this classic Christie audio.”

Publishers Weekly (starred audio review)

“Narrator Hugh Fraser is particularly compelling as author Ariadne Oliver, who is said to be Christie’s alter ego in her mysteries. The wide range of suspects includes a most convenient one, Mrs. McGinty’s lodger. There are some funny moments while Poirot boards with one of the worst cooks in England. The story closes with Poirot teaching her to make a proper omelet.

AudioFile

“Hercule Poirot, the fastidious Belgian with the egg-shaped head and fierce mustache, taught me how to look for clues inside secrets. He is still the detective most perfect—he would have stood for nothing less.”

Halllie Ephron, New York Times bestselling author, praise for the author

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